Tonight I went to see Harlan Ellison at the Writers Guild Foundation in Beverly Hills. They showed a new documentary about Ellison entitled Dreams with Sharp Teeth, which was followed by a Q&A and then a reception. It was my first trip over to the WGF, and it was a lot of fun. I’m definitely going to try to check out more of their events. One highlight was when I happened to glance up and notice that Ronald D. Moore was sitting right across the aisle from me.
I also really enjoyed the reading I went to last week — Etgar Keret at the Skirball Cultural Center. Keret read three very short fiction pieces interspersed with a lot of funny chat and anecdotes. For example, he talked about how he first started writing: He had been drafted into the Israeli army and was a terrible soldier, so they stuck him with the lonely and monotonous task of watching over a supercomputer to report if anything went wrong with it, but nothing ever did. One day, bored out of his mind, he typed up a short short on the computer. When his shift ended, he printed out the story and went over to his brother’s apartment. His brother agreed to read the story while walking the dog. When his brother finished reading, Etgar asked, “Is it good?,” and his brother said, “Oh yeah, yeah, it’s great. Just terrific.” Then his brother said, “Could you print out another copy of this?” Etgar, brimming with pride, said, “Sure! No problem.” “Great,” his brother said, and used the story to scoop up the dog poop.
[…] that the biographical documentary Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth (which I caught the premiere of back in 2007) is now an instant download on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it, it’s […]